amlogic News - Page 16 of 17 - CNX Software

December 4, 2013May 25, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 16 Comments

AMLogic Processor Roadmap: Quad core Cortex A9 (M8), and 64-bit ARM processors (M9)

We already knew AMLogic is about to release a quad core Cortex A9 SoC, previously codenamed AML8726-M8, but recently renamed to M80X family with 4 different SoCs, but the company has now officially announced the new M8 family, as well as M9 that will feature 64-bit ARM Cortex A5X cores with Mali T7XX GPU. Onda V975m, the first tablet based on M802 processor, was also part of the announcement. Price: 999 CNY (~$164). The new products line is divided as follows: M801/M802 Quad core Cortex A9r4 @ 2GHz with Octo-core Mali-450MP GPU @ 600MHz 4K2K video decoding, Full 1080p decoding (multi-codec), and 1080p H.264 encoding Dual channel DDR3/LPDDR3 up to 4GB 64-bit SDRAM bandwidth HDMI 1.4 up to 4K2K OS – Android 4.4 Kit Kat (Dec. 2013), Google TV version 4 BGA package, 28nm HPM M803/M805 Quad core CPU with Quad core GPU 1080p H.265 decoding, and 1080p HW encoding […]

November 6, 2013November 6, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 15 Comments

Geniatech ATV1800 Android TV Box To Feature AMLogic Quad Core Processor & Android 4.3

A few months ago, we learned AMLogic was working on a Quad core Cortex A9 SoC with the new ARM Mali-450MP6 (8 cores) GPU called AML8726-M8. It turns out AML8726-M8 may not only be one processor, but a family of processors (M801, M802, M803, and M805) according to a recent article in Chinese. This SoC was going to be part of Geniatech ATV1800 Android STB, but specifications were not available. More details have now surfaced. Geniatech (aka Mygica) ATV1800 Enjoy TV Specifications: SoC – AMLogic M801 or M802 Quad core Cortex A9 @ 1.6 to 2.0 GHz + ARM Mali-450MP6 GPU System Memory – 2GB DDR3 Storage – 8GB NAND + microSD card slot Video Output – HDMI 1.4 up to 1080p, and composite Audio Output – HDMI, Stereo RCA output, and optical SPDIF (TBC) Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet, built-in 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, and Bluetooth USB – 4 USB 2.0 […]

April 28, 2013April 29, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 30 Comments

AMLogic To Unveil 4 Core Cortex A9 AML8726-M8 SoC with 8 Core Mali GPU

Last Thursday, Geniatech announced an upcoming Android Set-Top Box called ATV1800 featuring a quad core AMLogic processor, more memory, and running Android 4.2, and that will support XBMC. They also expect the device to be available in May for 20 to 24 USD more than the dual core version. There are not enough details about the device itself, so I won’t cover it now, but I had never heard about quad core processor from AMLogic. I’ve finally been told it was AML8726-M8 without much details, except it should be available in Q3 2013, which does not seem match May target for Geniatech’s STB. Luckily, a Google search helped a lot, so we already know some of the key features for this new SoC: Quad Core Cortex A9 @ 2.0 GHz (20,000 DMIPS) Eight Core “Next-Gen” Mali GPU with 3,000 MPixel/s fill rate, 110MT/s, and 45GFLOPS. The GPU is said to […]

April 15, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 19 Comments

Android Set-top Boxes With Digital Satellite TV Receiver (DVB-S2)

There are now plenty of Android set-top boxes or HDMI TV sticks, but if you want to watch digital satellite or terrestrial TV, the options are limited. If you already have a satellite receiver at home, you could buy an Android set-top box with an HDMI input such as Huawei MediaQ M310, or use a DVB-S2 USB adapter, but you may need to acquire both the kernel source and DVB driver to compile it for your device. So for now, the last option is currently reserved for ODM/OEM as mentioned on Geniatech store. But today, I’m going to write about an Android set-top boxes that comes with a satellite receiver (DVB-S2). They are all based on AMLogic AML8726-M1/M3, and models include: Geniatech ATV1100B Hybrid DVB Box – Multiple standards STV-502 – DVB-S2 Monolithelec MINGLE – DVB-S2 Geniatech ATV1100B Key Features: SoC – AmLogic AML8726-M1 ARM Cortex A9 @ 800MHz System […]

March 28, 2013October 6, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

Droid Stick A2 mini PC Recovery with AMLogic’s Hardware Flash Tool

In some circumstances, for example by installing the wrong firmware or doing something wrong by playing god (as a root user), it’s possible to brick your device. This happened to me with one of my Droid Stick A2 mini PCs based on AMLogic AML8726-MX. I changed some files in /system/etc/permissions directory, lost Wi-Fi access, and even replacing my changes with the backup files would not solve the problem. It also changed some permissions in the system, and it was not possible to restore the firmware the usual way. At the end of last month, dbtablets left a comment with download links to “Amlogic USB Burning tool”, but I only decided to give it a try today, and after some efforts I was successful. Just make sure you only use this method as last resort, i.e. a standard firmware upgrade does not work, and you’re about to throw your device in […]

February 4, 2013February 4, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

How To Root Droid Stick A2 mini PC

Droid Stick A2 mini PC does not come rooted, so here’s a simple rooting guide for the device. First, make sure you’ve installed the latest firmware, then follow the instructions below (Source: ARMTvTech): Copy update_Superuser.zip to the root of a micro SD card. Insert the microSD card to Droid Stick A2, and power the device Go the Apps menu in Android, and launch “Upgrade” app. Select Local Upgrade Select update_Superuser.zip Select Reboot And Install Package Let the update go through, and let it boot to Android. You should now have root access. This method deleted old version of su and Superuser.apk, copies su to /system/bin & Superuser.apk to /system/app, and changes permissions on those files. It may also work on other AMLogic AML8726-M1 / M3 / MX based devices. If you are interested in knowing exactly what it does, unzip update_Superuser.zip, and open /META-INF/com/google/android/updater-script. For some reasons, the first time I […]

November 22, 2012November 22, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 15 Comments

AMLogic Releases U-Boot and Updated Linux Kernel Source Code

AMLogic released kernel 3.0.8 source code for AML8726-MX a few months ago, and yesterday they provided an updated tarballs with the kernel, and for the first time, AFAIK, released the source code for U-Boot. There are 4 new files apparently generated from the (internal) git repository in AMLogic: common-2012-11-20-git-b687495906.tar.gz (108M) – This is the same kernel 3.0.8 release has last time, but with updated code. m1-kernel-android-2012-11-20-git-5d0f6b8e93.tar.gz (103M) – This looks like an older kernel 2.6 for AML8726-M1 only. uboot-master-2012-11-20-git-9b50e9a295.tar.gz (16M) – U-Boot 2010.06 possibly to use with the older 2.6 kernel. Only for M1 & M3 platforms. uboot-next-2012-11-20-git-b0e532795a.tar.gz (40M) – U-Boot 2011.03 for use with M3 and M6 platforms. I’ve already explained how to build the kernel in the previous post, so I’ll focus on U-Boot this time. Ubuntu 12.04 arm-linux-gnueabi- toolchain fails to build U-Boot (uboot-next), so you’ll have to install Sourcery toolchain instead: wget http://openlinux.amlogic.com/download/linux/ARM/gnutools/arm-2010q1-188-arm-none-eabi-i686-pc-linux-gnu.tar.bz2 tar xjvf arm-2010q1-188-arm-none-eabi-i686-pc-linux-gnu.tar.bz2 […]

October 31, 2012October 31, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 22 Comments

Crowdfunding Initiative to Open AMLogic AML8726-M3 STB Source Code

J1nx (Peter Steenbergen) has spend a lot of time together with XBMC developers to try to bring XBMC (Linux) to ARM based set-top boxes, and initially AllWinner A10 processor seemed like a good candidate, unfortunately due to the lack of proper video engine libraries for Linux, progress on this SoC has been extremely slow. Then when Pivos and XBMC announced Pivos Xios DS set-top box based on AMLogic aml8726-M(1) would support XBMC natively, and the kernel and bootlooader (u-boot) source code was made available both on Pivos github account and AMLogic open source website, AML8726 series of processors appeared to be an ideal solution for this purpose. Instead of AML8726-M (aka AML8726-M1) which is limited to 512 MB, it was decided instead to use a faster processor AML8726-M3 that supports 1 GB RAM. The STB of choice is based on “MBX – f16ref” which should be some kind of development […]